


this is my show

by attheborder



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Dark Jopson, Dubious Consent, Face-Fucking, M/M, Mind Games, Power Dynamics, We're not so different you and I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:01:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27681875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: Jopson’s voice has lost all its polish, now: it’s gone rough around the edges, wonderfully familiar in a way. So many months spent seeing the man as something untouchable, an impossible aspiration, and Hickey is finding now that they are in fact made of the same stuff—the same crawling, climbing weeds sprouting through city cobblestones. Two different inversions, from the same point of inflection.
Relationships: Cornelius Hickey/Others, Cornelius Hickey/Thomas Jopson, William Gibson/Cornelius Hickey
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28
Collections: Hickeyshipping 2020





	this is my show

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whalersandsailors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalersandsailors/gifts).



> i combined two of whalersandsailors' excellent prompts: Hickey/dark!Jopson dubcon, and Hickey + deviously seducing his way through the stewards & lieutenants.
> 
> title is, of course, from lana del rey's ["fucked my way up to the top"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_qmj7z1XhU)

When Hickey asks Billy about Mr. Jopson, it is with the idle tone of someone simply searching for a new turn in the conversation, some topic as yet undisturbed by their hushed, leisurely discussions. In these dark, sticky minutes after their breathing calms but they are not yet ready to climb the ladder, they talk about all sorts of things.

“Why do you ask?” Billy replies, skeptically.

“He seems like an odd sort,” says Hickey with a shrug. “Finding it hard to get the measure of him, is all. What do you know about him? Where does he come from?”

“He’s from London, I think… He sailed on this ship, on her last expedition.”

“To the South Pole?”

“Yes,” says Billy. “I hear the Captain speak of it sometimes during supper. They faced a great deal of danger in those waters.”

“The monsters at the edges of the map?” Hickey wiggles his fingers in the air, mimicking the claws of great beasts. He is reclining against a crate, his legs tangled with Billy’s, slowly rubbing the fin of his ankle against the bony curve of Billy’s calf.

Billy eyes Hickey with an amused smile. “Something of that sort. Islands of ice, far bigger than we’ve seen. Wicked storms, vicious winds. Crozier said they were hardly prepared.”

“And Jopson?”

“Indispensable, apparently. Proved himself time and time again.”

“In what ways?”

“Oh, how am I supposed to know, Cornelius?” Billy says, his tone gone mulish and stubborn. “He doesn’t speak in detail. Always returning to tales of Sir James...”

All too often Billy shuts up just when Hickey wants him to speak on. He can be stunningly incurious sometimes: it’s as if he goes through life wearing blinders like a carthorse, not paying attention to anything except that which he’s bound by duty to mind. Hickey supposes it must make things easier, but all the same he’d like to instill the value of interest in him, if he can.

“He seems altogether too—shining, don’t you think?” Hickey says. “Jopson, I mean. There’s got to be a flaw, somewhere.”

In the dark, Hickey catches the roll of Billy’s eyes. “You always think the worst of people. He’s a fine steward. He works hard, just as we all do. Well... most of us.”

Hickey kicks Billy’s leg, hard, and Billy lets out a yelp, rubbing at the dusty mark Hickey’s shoe made. Then he begins to clamber, insect-like, to his feet.

“No, no,” says Hickey, reaching up to grab for him, “stay. If I go up, Darlington will be on me—”

 _“You_ can stay,” says Billy, primly, shaking Hickey off. “I’ve got to go get dinner ready. First dog watch is nearly done.”

He disappears up the ladderway, leaving Hickey in the gloom alone.

Billy was the first—a fine winter wife: half-spite and half-soft, in turns pliable and prickly. Never the same two nights running—delightfully unpredictable, equally quick with an insult as with a joke.

But he is not the only one.

It began when Hickey had determined, almost as soon as he came aboard, that the drudgery of this yearlong journey could be abridged—or at least tempered—by a direct relationship with the Captain. Crozier needs someone like Hickey, does he not? Someone to act as confidante, as vizier, as guiding hand. A life spent under the thumb of the flabby, gilded Admiralty surely has blinded him to the needs of the men in his charge—who better than Hickey, keen-eyed and sharp-eared, to assist him?

At first, the Captain seemed entirely out of reach. Hickey is an interloper, in that shining country aft of the hatchway; only the stewards and officers are permitted, and he a mere mate! Narrowed eyes and sour looks all they have to offer, for what has he ever done for them, besides seal their stinking privies and stand watch over their precious deck?

But as in all things—as in the smooth efficiency with which he’d managed to leave England astern, just as he’d done Liverpool, just as he’d done Manchester—he quickly made a plan.

By now he has gotten on his knees for Mr. Genge and his superior the clerk, both men dry as ship’s biscuit, quite useless and discarded with speedy apathy.

He has suffered through the phlegmatic whinging of Mr. Armitage, the application of his sloppy, inexpert mouth, all in the service of finding out that the boy, half-deaf, hears nothing in the gunroom from Mr. Blanky about the Captain’s whims or desires.

He has dallied with Lieutenant Hodgson, who might have been any of the gentleman-like fellows that used to approach Hickey in the darkness of St. James’s Park, coin in hand—nervous as a rabbit, and just as fiendishly desperate to couple.

He’s spat the sour seed of Lieutenant Little into the man’s basin, leaving him panting, curled on his berth with his dark hair falling on his face, looking far unhappier than a man who’d just spent a good many minutes fucking a willing mouth ought to.

And for Lieutenant Irving he merely performed, frigging himself in the corner while the pious officer watched, hungrily, hands working at the frayed edge of his shirttails as he wrestled with the urge to touch himself.

All this extra work for no pay—not a single shilling—and the Captain is still obscure; the holy solar center of the golden orrery that is _Terror_ untouchable and distant as it ever was. The earned trust of a half-dozen men absolutely useless, in the end, because there is nobody, _nobody_ Crozier will bend his ear to besides that wretched, simpering steward of his.

Mr. Jopson is at his side during every muster; following him down the ice ramp with his coat in hand, for the Captain, always warmed by drink, has a damnable habit of forgetting it; dipping in and out of that stronghold of his, the _Great Cabin_ (Billy speaks its name as if it were a palace) at all hours.

It might be more tolerable if the man was seen to receive special treatment, if he were more of a pampered pet—then at least Hickey’s aims to supplant him would have some grounding in justice. But in point of fact he works just as hard and half again as any seaman: here he is, sawing ice alongside Peglar and Strong; here he is, hauling canvas up to prepare the ship’s winter cover; here he is, laboriously scrubbing moisture from the beams with the rest of the men when it starts to condense.

Envy is an ugly trait, and one that Hickey tries his best not to cultivate. Yet he stews in it, boils in it, so much so that it turns him snappish and moody, the duty owing piling up as he mislays his tools, talks back to his superiors, sneaks off to the orlop to brood and misses muster.

Even Billy starts to take notice, complaining of Hickey being rougher than him with usual. Hickey has no ear for his whining—he is too busy thinking, thinking, thinking.

What sort of heroics could Jopson have possibly performed at furthest south to distinguish himself? From Lieutenant Hodgson he knows that Crozier was not allowed to pick any of his officers or men, save one—why press a lowly steward over a trusted lieutenant?

Does he let the Captain fuck him? Does he pretend he is someone else, the Captain’s wife or mistress or long-lost lover? Or does the Captain like to be buggered, perhaps—such a thing Hickey hardly imagined was possible in the Royal Navy before coming aboard, but his ignorance has long since been holystoned away by the things he’s learned aboard this very vessel.

He could figure himself a steward’s mate, easily. Such a thing is needed—surely Mr. Jopson deserves more sleep than the scant minutes he must get, in between all of the tasks under his purview.

Once ensconced in Jopson’s trust—assisting, replacing—then soon enough it might be him holding the razor to the Captain’s throat in the morning before breakfast; it might be him bringing news of the men to the Captain, sharing his insights and receiving boons in return.

***

Officer’s country is unusually deserted. The Captain and the Lieutenants dine on _Erebus_ tonight, Billy had said. “And Jopson’s going over too,” he’d remarked offhand, “as Mr. Hoar is on the sick-list.”

Hickey makes his way through the galley unnoticed and creeps down the passageway towards the darkened, silent Great Cabin. Command must have left in a hurry for supper, for there are papers scattered all about the table. Some look to be of great interest—Crozier’s charts, with notes scribbled in the margins; a half-finished letter addressed to _James dear,_ a cut-crystal glass with a dribble of whisky still left in it. A chess set on the far side of the room shows white losing, badly.

He picks up a set of golden calipers lying heavy across a map of Lancaster Sound and examines it, feels the luxurious weight of it in his palm—

“I’d put that down, if I were you, Mr. Hickey.”

The voice, from behind him, is unmistakable.

“I saw the mess,” Hickey says, straightening up, adjusting his neckerchief. “Thought I would help put things to order—”

Like some great beast of the savage jungle, silently stalking forward on padded paws, Jopson moves swiftly; he gets Hickey backed up into the corner, not pinning him with his body but with his eyes, ice in the dark.

“You’re not allowed in here.”

“Of course,” says Hickey, keeping his tone light, “it’s just I believed you gone over for the evening—”

“I could have you brought up on charges,” says Jopson. “Trespassing in a superior’s quarters. Shirking duty. Stealing.”

“I haven’t taken anything, sir.” Not a lie. He hadn’t, yet. “You could turn out my pockets, I promise.”

“Doesn’t mean a thing.” The corners of Jopson’s lips draw apart—barely a smile, more a grimace, as if he’s just swallowed some bitter liquid. “The Captain would believe my word over yours. No question of it.”

“Of course he’d believe you,” says Hickey. He licks his lips; drops his voice low. “He’d believe anything you tell him, wouldn’t he? Your voice in his ear. Your hand on his prick—”

“How _dare_ you,” snarls Jopson, and now the scant distance between them evaporates, and one of Jopson’s strong arms is a bar over his chest, pressing him into the bookcase, hard wooden edges digging into his back.

There’s something in Jopson’s eyes that isn’t quite anger. Grief, maybe, or sorrow; it puts his pretty porcelain face into rueful disarray, which to Hickey’s eye turns it suddenly unbearably handsome. The mask slips, the cracks show; beneath which lies something boiling and dark, like molasses, and a fire catches somewhere. Hickey realizes—belatedly, and with a spark of unexpected delight—that this was a trap. The papers all askew, Billy’s secondhand lie about Jopson going across to _Erebus_ —Jopson _wanted_ to catch him here, wanted to corner him, deliver this threatening ultimatum.

The thought thrills: that while he was circling closer to Jopson, Jopson was not ignorant of his attentions. That he’s been expected. Invited, even, in a way. A slow mutual entrapment on the basis of simmering hatred.

And if Hickey knows what Jopson wants, then he has the advantage.

“I’m just trying to help,” says Hickey. Injects a quaver into his voice—a minute frisson of vulnerability. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t require assistance from the likes of you,” says Jopson. “Nor does the Captain.”

“And what am I _like,_ then?” Hickey asks, rolling the word on his tongue, giving an innocent flutter of his lashes up at Jopson: a dare.

“I’ll tell you. You’re a grousing, grubbing, indolent flea of a man,” says Jopson. “You think I don’t notice what you’ve been up to?” He punctuates this with a tug on Hickey’s neckerchief. “Oiling down your hair—getting Mr. Gibson to hem your jacket higher—hanging around the pantry, fancying yourself a steward—a _Captain’s_ steward at that, well.” He laughs: a dry, demeaning noise. “It’s never gonna work.”

Jopson’s voice has lost all its polish, now: it’s gone rough around the edges, wonderfully familiar in a way. So many months spent seeing the man as something untouchable, an impossible aspiration, and Hickey is finding now that they are in fact made of the same stuff—the same crawling, climbing weeds sprouting through city cobblestones. Two different inversions, from the same point of inflection.

He takes a chance—reaches up to slowly brush Jopson’s hair away, from where a lock of it hangs out of place on his forehead. And he is rewarded: Jopson slaps him, hard. His face burns with the impact and his prick throbs in his trousers, in time with the rush of blood in his ears.

“Don’t _touch_ me.”

The fury in Jopson’s eyes stokes the flames further, and Hickey fights back a grin, keeping his eyes wide and fearful instead, for he would like very much to see what Jopson has planned. His self-preservation bell has not yet begun to ring; Jopson only sees what Hickey wants him to.

“I won’t give you the plague, now, Mr. Jopson,” says Hickey. “Won’t give you anything you can pass onto Captain Crozier.”

“Stay well away from him,” Jopson snarls.

“Oh, I’d love to,” says Hickey. “I’d dearly love to be away. Far, far away from all this, somewhere warm, with no pretty stewards to keep me on my toes...”

Jopson redoubles his grip on Hickey, pushing his arm into Hickey’s throat, forcing him up—yes, onto his toes, to avoid gasping for breath.

“What’ll you do?” Hickey sneers. “Send me to _Erebus_? No, no. You want to keep an eye on me. You want to make sure I don’t start whispering in any ears you can’t bend to either. You want to set your little traps for me, you want to find reasons to stay on my scent—" 

“You’ll shut up now, if you know what’s good for you, Mr. Hickey.”

“I will not,” says Hickey. He punctuates this with a quick, forceful shove to Jopson’s chest, throwing him off balance enough so he can wiggle out from underneath him. “I’ll say what I like—”

Before he can dart around, he’s pushed to his knees, hitting the deck hard, a jolt up his legs and spine. Head bowed, so Jopson will not see, he grins to himself. How wonderful, to feel the steward spinning out of control. Should he launch another taunt, before things progress, or save it for the aftermath?

His decision is made for him; Jopson has his trouser-front open and with one hand is drawing out a sizable yard. With the other he forces Hickey’s chin up, and, taking pains to hide his eagerness, Hickey accepts Jopson’s prick, letting it crowd its way past his teeth to lie hot and swollen on his tongue.

Jopson braces one hand on the bookcase and buries the other in Hickey’s hair as he pistons his hips, brutal thrusts into Hickey’s mouth. He means to make Hickey choke, but he picked the wrong man for that.

Hickey grabs onto Jopson’s thigh and clutches at it through the neatly pressed fabric of his wide trousers, digging in with his nails as hard as he can: he doesn’t know if Jopson’s cry is from the pain, or from pleasure in the way Hickey is taking him, deep and close.

If Hickey had known from the start of this seething darkness under Jopson’s pale skin, like the surging rancid Fleet Ditch beneath the pretty bridge at Bridwell, then perhaps he would have not bothered with all the others. He would have made a different plan.

But he is not a man of regrets, and this will do for now: his practiced throat working around Jopson’s furious prick, the burn in his scalp where his hair, neatly slicked in such a stewardly style, is being disarrayed by that tense grip, the scent of blood in the air not from any skin bared now but from a wound invisible, inside, in one of them or maybe both. 

Soon he feels Jopson start to tense and shudder; instinct of years tells him that the man plans to remove himself, and spend extravagantly across Hickey’s face. But such an indignity would be a step too far.

So when he’s proven right, and Jopson tries to tug him off, he instead resists, pressing forward, his hands tightening round the bends of Jopson’s knees, tonguing the underside of Jopson’s prick to urge the crisis closer.

As soon as he feels the first spurt of wet warmth in the back of his throat he looks up, and holds the steward’s crystalline gaze, intent as he swallows down his seed. He makes a meal of it, baring his throat: the taste fine enough, reminding him even of his own spend, those times he’s licked it out of Billy’s mouth.

It has the desired destabilizing effect. Jopson, face clouded by his crisis, breath coming in low, quick huffs, looks as if he’s seen a ghost, or perhaps a monster. Hickey pulls off with a slick sound, licks his lips; slowly and deliberately gathering nonexistent flecks of spending from his whiskers with the tip of his tongue.

He rises; pushes past Jopson with a sharp elbow to the man’s stomach. The shocked exhalation of pain Jopson lets out inspires a smirk in Hickey, and he cannot resist gesturing at the mess that is still spread across the Captain’s table and asking: “Shall I stay to pick up, sir?”

A veritable _growl_ from Jopson, an almost feral approach, teeth bared, fist balled at his side—Hickey backs away, his hands up, and slips out of the room. Before he’s all the way across the threshold, heavy footsteps sound behind him and the door slams closed, nearly catching his heel in the track.

In the empty, echoing passageway, then, Hickey leans against the bulkhead and frees his own throbbing prick at last; lets the memory of Jopson’s rough, demeaning grip inspire his own release.

Then he makes his way forward on legs that shake only slightly; ignoring the calls of greeting from his messmates and friends, and sinking into his hammock, once more thinking, thinking.

***

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com) and [twitter!](http://twitter.com/areyougonnabe)


End file.
